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Automatic, the smart driving assistant that connects your car to your iPhone, is updating its accompanying iOS app today with a new design and new features. The new design, Automatic says, is meant to be “lighter, faster and more modern”. The gray header, for example, has been replaced with a white field displaying the current and past driving stats collected by the app.

In addition to the refreshed look and feel, Automatic 2.0 for iPhone brings new features to Automatic Link users. With the update, Automatic will offer fuel level information and warnings on supported cars. While this feature only works on supported cars, in many cases it goes beyond dashboard fuel gauges as Automatic can present an estimate of miles possible to be driven before running out of fuel based on previous driving behaviors.

Automatic will gain the ability to send a push notification to your iPhone if you would like to be notified of low fuel levels before your dashboard warns you. Automatic says this notification can be set based on a miles to empty amount or at markers like a quarter tank of fuel.

The company says only about half of cars using Automatic have diagnostic ports that support the fuel features, though, so check the make and model of your car on their website first to know if you should expect support.

Existing users will also appreciate new speed feedback improvements. Automatic 2.o now allows users to set the threshold for speed alerts to specific miles per hour. Alerts also behave differently with the update; users will be alerted with reaching a certain speed, but not again unless the user dips below that speed and reaches it again removing repetitive alerts.

For more on how it all works, check out our review of the Automatic Link from last fall. If you want to try out Automatic for yourself. Automatic 2.0 for iPhone is available on the App Store for free, and Automatic Link is available for $99.95 on Amazon.

Does this update finally support the ability to enter the price of the fuel purchased. Version 1.0 would try to estimate the cost based on your location. This does not work for vehicles that require a higher octane fuel as the app would only use the lower fuel price. Given the app calculates the cost of your trip it would be nice to correctly enter the cost of the fuel.

One issue with Automatic is that a lll of your driving data it uploaded to their site and it is _not_ anonymized. There is no way to opt-out so my Automatic is not in my car. I have to wonder why they want all my driving data and have it associated with my personal information.